PayPal, with Walrus and Calabash, launched a campaign to show its payments system’s wide acceptance

PayPal launched a new six spot online ad campaign, “Ubiquity,” created by New York agency Walrus. The campaign features character animation from Calabash that visually highlights just how much 19 million actually is. That number is significant: it’s the number of online retailers that accept PayPal, and as the :15 spots, animated in partnership with Chicago-based design house Run Kick Shout, show it’s also way more than say the amount of pigeons in New York City (roughly 4 million), or Americans named Bob (over 4.5 million), to name just two.

Walrus had great concepts and a clear idea of what they were looking for stylistically, which provided us with a lot of inspiration (…) They came to us to develop the action and the final look of the animation, so we took their concepts a step or two further, and in several cases offered a few different options and alternatives where the original concepts were a little more open-ended. It was very collaborative and we had fun brainstorming ideas to convey the message in fun and inventive ways.

Sean Henry,

Executive Producer Calabash

Each spot opens in a clinical “infographical” kind of way, complete with an overly serious voiceover, that uses a bar graph with PayPal logo atop to emphasize the multitude of online vendors that accept PayPal.

From the start, we had a strategic partnership with Run Kick Shout, who we have known for several years (…) Creative Directors Erik Jensen and Nick Hopkins took on the task of lighting, rendering, inventing and adding effects like the zombie laser blasts and finally compositing the spots. For the pigeons and all of the Bobs, they created the flocking, the crowd multiplication and the stacking up of all the little figures that we animated individually. All of that depended on close collaboration with our team.

Wayne Brejcha,

Creative Director Calabash

 

Led by Creative Director Wayne Brejcha and Executive Producer Sean Henry, Calabash Animation is the Chicago, IL-based animation production studio known for its award-winning animation for the advertising and entertainment industries. Calabash Animation is perhaps best known for their creative character animation and development of some of America’s most beloved brand icons.

Creative Credits:

Client: PayPal

Agency: Walrus, New York

Owner, CCO:  Deacon Webster

Producer: Chris Thielo

Director of Integrated Production & Creative Services: Valerie Hope
Associate Creative Director: Evan Vosburgh
Sr. Art Director: Evan Bross:

Copywriter: Marco Diaddezio:

Animation: Calabash, Chicago, IL

Creative Director: Wayne Brejcha

Executive Producer: Sean Henry

Production Manager: Diane Grider

Lead Animator: Jeff Mika

Character Animation: Jeff Mika, Jimmy Wasion, Nick Oropeza, Levi Ames, Sydney Leining, Nathan Tungseth, Kristen Rhee, Corey Stisser, David Brancato

Animation/Design: Run Kick Shout, Chicago, IL

Creative Directors: Nick Hopkins, Erik Jensen

Animation: Nick Hopkins, Erik Jensen, Brody Davis, John Filipkowski

Lighting & Rendering: Nick Hopkins, Erik Jensen